44 - Rockland, Maine
The crew of the “Wrangel” made short work of refloating the Hinckley yawl with inflatable salvage bags. The sailboat was towed to the Coast Guard station at nearby Rockland, Maine, where it was tied to the pier. Orders came from Washington that nobody was to board the vessel until an inspection team could be flown in.
A Department of Homeland Security Gulfstream 550 jet landed at Owl’s Head Airport near Rockland within two hours of the first report from the “Wrangel.” The four members of the Nuclear Emergency Support Team, a NEST team, hurried to the Coast Guard minivan waiting to drive them to the sailboat. The team members carried innocuous-looking backpacks, but when the Coast Guard driver offered to help the one female member of the team with her bag, she angrily pushed him aside, then reacted to his hurt expression.
“I’m sorry, sailor,” she said. “This isn’t feminism, it’s just that what’s in this bag is very expensive and very fragile. If anybody is going to drop it and get in trouble, I’d rather it be me.”
Chief among the devices was a 10-pound battery powered instrument called a Cryo3. It looked like little more than a shiny brass coffee can with legs on the bottom and a handle on top. In reality, the device was a sensitive radiation monitor developed by scientists at the University of California at Berkeley’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The unit contained an extremely high purity germanium crystal designed to absorb energetic photons emanating from radioactive isotopes. Germanium is sensitive to radiation only at extremely low temperatures. The scientists who designed the Cryo3 used a cooling system originally built for cell phone tower equipment to bring the germanium crystal to minus 186 degrees. Analysis of the machine’s readout could pinpoint both the quantity and type of radioactive material present.
Arriving at the dock, the team leader climbed onto the sailboat carrying his Cryo3 and disappeared into the cabin for five minutes. When he emerged, his face was ashen. He sat in the boat’s cockpit and looked up at the anxious faces of the NEST team members.
“What is it, boss?” the woman team member asked.
The team leader looked up and spoke quietly.
“U-235,” he said. “A clear, strong indication of U-235 and nothing else. This is it. The real thing.”
He stood up.
“Get me the radio,” he said. “Things have to start happening, fast.”
As one team member handed the team leader a high frequency satellite phone, equipped with a sophisticated scrambler, the Coast Guard driver standing next to the woman turned to her with an inquisitive look on his face.
“What does that mean, U-235? Are we all hot or something, hair gonna fall out, or worse than that?” he asked with a worried tone to his voice.
“No, nothing like that. We’re not in any danger, at least not from radiation,” the woman answered. “U-235 is a radio isotope.”
She saw the puzzled look on his face.
“That means it is a material that is radioactive, that emits radiation. But U-235 is a fairly low level emitter, not all that dangerous to handle. It can be blocked by something as simple as aluminum foil.”
“Oh, so that’s a good thing,” the sailor said. “How come all the long faces then if this is the good radioactive stuff?”
“It isn’t all that good,” she answered. “Most radioisotopes have lots of different uses, for medical devices or scientific instruments, for example. U-235 is different. It has only one use. That’s the problem we have here.”
“Why,” he asked. “What the hell is the stuff used for?” The sailor laughed and said with a joking tone, “What, they make bombs from it or something?”
The woman looked at him with a deadpan expression.
“You’ve hit it right on the nose, sailor,” she said. “The only thing U-235 is good for is making bombs, very powerful bombs. Think Hiroshima. What was on board that boat was either enough U-235 to make a bomb or, God forbid, an atomic bomb itself.”
“How can you tell whether it was a bomb or just some material,” the sailor asked.
“Easy. Either when we find it,” she answered. “Or when it goes bang.”
The NEST team leader ordered the team’s entire “air force” to head for Maine. NEST could call on four helicopters and three fixed-wing airplanes, a King Air B-200 twin turboprop, a Citation-II jet, and an ancient Convair 580T, all equipped with advanced radiological search systems. These aircraft could sweep a 50 square mile area in a matter of hours. Airborne detection of atomic radiation was a tricky business, however. Some forms of radiation, such as from the radium or cesium isotopes used in cancer treatments, are fairly simple to detect from the air because they penetrate most substances unless heavily shielded. The radiation from U-235 however, is almost impossible to detect from the air unless the substance is lying on the ground in the open. Just a few inches of concrete can totally block the radiation. Making the job even more difficult, the vast beds of granite underlying much of coastal Maine are natural emitters of radon gas and the accompanying radiation.
The team leader had little expectation that the material, or the bomb containing it, would be found from an aerial search, but he had to try nonetheless.
More likely to be successful was an old fashioned detective investigation. That began with tracing the history of the sailboat. All larger boats in the United States, pleasure boats and commercial boats, are registered through the Coast Guard’s Vessel Documentation Office. This office was created by the eleventh action of the very first United States Congress. Protection of commercial vessels has been a primary concern of commerce for centuries.
Ownership and home port information for every American boat over thirty feet or so in length is recorded and kept current. A vessel’s documentation number must be, in the Coast Guard’s parlance, “permanently affixed in block-type Arabic numerals at least three inches high on some clearly visible interior structural part of the hull.” With that number in hand, any boat’s ownership history is a mouse click away.
The NEST team leader crawled into the forward compartment in the boat and searched the ceiling beams there for the documentation number. He found it carefully carved, in the requisite three-inch Arabic numbers, into a beam running crosswise at the aft end of the forward cabin. He jotted the number down on his note pad.
As soon as he finished his confidential report to Washington on the encrypted high frequency satphone, the team leader called the Vessel Documentation Office in Falling Water, West Virginia and asked to be put through to the commanding officer. He gave a code phrase. The phone operator did not recognize it and curtly told him to wait. Moments later, after she consulted her operations manual, her tone of voice changed abruptly and she told the team leader she would put his call right through. A voice came on the line within a minute.
“This is Commander William Jameson responding to your codeword THOR call. To whom am I speaking, please?”
“This is Robert Rhymes, team leader for a National Department of Energy Nuclear Security Administration Nuclear Emergency Support Team presently located in Rockland, Maine,” the team leader said.
“That’s quite a mouthful of a title,” the Coast Guard officer responded. “But a very impressive mouthful. What can I do for you?”
“I need to find the owner of a boat, a sailboat, immediately. It is without question a matter of great national security and I ask that you devote your entire resources to this. Can I have your agreement to do so, Sir?”
“Sure thing, buddy,” the officer responded. “No problem. But this won’t take anybody’s entire resources. Give me the documentation number and I’ll punch it right into my computer here. You could have done this from any computer on the Internet, you know. It’s no big secret. What’s the number?”
“The number carved into the boat’s main beam is 1129082.”
“Fine, hold on one second,” the officer replied. “OK, here it is. The boat is owned by one William Appleton of Seal Harbor, Maine. That’s just down the road from where you are in Rockland. Served up there myself. Breathtaking scenery, though cold as, cold as, well, you know what, in the winter.”
The team leader wrote down that information, along with the telephone number for William Appleton listed in the Coast Guard records. He thanked the officer and hung up, then dialed Appleton’s number on his cell phone. His fingers were crossed.
“Appleton residence,” the voice answering the phone on the second ring said. “Abigail Appleton speaking.”
“Ms. Appleton,” the team leader said. He was instantly interrupted.
“It is Mrs. Appleton, please. I don’t understand this MIZZ thing. I am extremely proud to be MRS. William Appleton. Now, who is this and what may I do for you, please?”
“Mrs. Appleton, my name is Robert Rhymes. I am with, well I am with a very important government agency and we are having something of an emergency. It is of the utmost importance that I speak with your husband. Is he available, please?” His tone of voice could not be more deferential.
He heard the woman’s voice choke for a moment. It was several seconds before she replied.
“I’m afraid that is not possible,” she said. “You see, my husband passed away, two weeks ago, two weeks tomorrow actually. I can refer you to my attorney, who is handling all of my husband’s matters. He is in Boston. If you’ll hold on for a moment, I’ll get his phone number.”
“Wait, Mrs. Appleton. Look, I’m so sorry about your loss but I don’t think your lawyer will be able to help. Maybe you can. I’m calling about your husband’s boat, his sailboat. It’s named “Swift.” Can you tell me who has been using the boat recently?”
“Well, that I can help you with, young man,” she replied. “Our son William, he’s actually William Junior, had been living on that boat for more than a year, doing that instead of working if you really want to know. He’d sailed it all over the place, across the ocean to England and all around France and Italy and all. Then he met up with some woman. He said we’d love her and he loved her and all that trash and he couldn’t wait for us to meet her.
“He’d finally agreed to come home, to sail the boat home, and settle down when all of a sudden we got a phone call from him that he was in some hospital in Athens with this woman. She’d been bitten by a poisonous fish or something and almost died. So he’d left the boat on some Greek island and flown with this woman to a hospital.
“A week later he called with the news that “Swift” had been stolen. He flew home right after that, with that tramp he’d met. They’re married now. We don’t speak often. His father owned that boat for twenty years. He was heartbroken at its loss. I told my son the loss of that boat undoubtedly contributed to his father’s heart attack. He was completely unapologetic.”
Rhymes was shocked to hear the boat was so close to the Middle East.
“Did he mention the name of the island,” he asked the woman.
“Yes, he did, and I wrote it down so I could look on the National Geographic world map we have and find where he had been. I circled it on the map. It was the tiniest dot.”
“Do you remember the island’s name, ma-am?”
“No, but I have the map in a cabinet in the next room. William and I always mark our travels on it, or we used to do so. Wait one moment.”
The implications of a stolen boat traveling from the Middle East to the United States with a nuclear bomb hidden in a water tank were frightening to Rhymes. After all the drills and all the false stories about hidden bombs to which he’d responded, this situation was becoming more and more like the real thing to him. The woman came back on the telephone.
“The island is called Xanthos, That is X-A-N-T-H-O-S. Have you heard of it?” She asked.
“No, ma-am, I haven’t,” Rhymes responded. “But I expect I will learn quite a bit about it shortly. Thank you. You’ve been extremely helpful.”
“Wait,” she commanded in the same tone of voice she probably used with her servants. “The local police have been most boorish about their efforts to recover the boat. We don’t believe in paying good money for insurance, my husband and I. Insurance promotes poor seamanship he used to say. I demand that the government find my husband’s boat.
“It has immense sentimental value.”
“I will be absolutely certain that gets done, ma’am,” Rhymes said before hanging up.
Rhymes consulted his notebook and then dialed another telephone number on his cell phone.
“Central Intelligence Agency, how may I direct your call,” the answering voice said.
“This is a THOR call. I need to speak to the director,” Rhymes said flatly.
Unlike the telephone operator at the Coast Guard Vessel Documentation Office, the CIA operator did not have to consult any manual in order to respond. She answered with a curt, “Yes sir.” A moment later a voice came on the phone.
“This is the Deputy Director. The Director is unavailable. To whom am I speaking?”
Rhymes identified himself and briefly explained the situation. The voice on the phone was just as abrupt.
“Thank you, Rhymes,” he said. “I’m on it. I’ll have our man in Athens get to that island immediately. Who gets the information?”
“For right now, I’m in charge at the scene,” Rhymes said. “But I expect to be replaced as the person in charge at any moment. You’ll know who to call. This is big and I expect you folks will be brought in any moment now. Thanks for your help.
“And Deputy Director. I’ve been in this business for twelve years. This is for real, very real. I feel that in my bones and I’m scared shitless.”
Even though it was 3:00 a.m. in Athens when the Deputy Director called the Agent in Charge at his home, the phone was answered on the second ring. At first light a seaplane took off from nearby Piraeus Harbor with the Agent in Charge on board. The aircraft became the second plane to land in the harbor on Xanthos.
The Agent in Charge quickly found his way to the small building on the quay where the Port Police office was located. He held a photograph of the “Swift” that was emailed to him overnight.
“I’m trying to find out about this boat,” he told the Corporal in charge of the small office. “You’ve seen it before.”
It was a statement, not a question.
The Corporal had expected somebody to inquire about the missing boat but nobody, no insurance company adjuster, no national police detective ever showed up. Now, this American with cold eyes and no laughter in his expression terrified the portly harbor official. He decided to simply tell the man the truth. After all, he’d done nothing wrong. How could the truth hurt him?
“Oh yes, the American boat,” he replied. “What a beautiful boat. What a tragedy happened to it. I could not believe it myself. My own trust and good judgment had been so wrong about that man. What a shock. People are still talking about it.”
“The man, what man,” the Agent in Charge asked. “Who are you talking about?”
“The man who stole that beautiful American boat,” the Corporal said. “He just got on the boat and sailed away, gone, over the horizon and gone.”
“What man, who was he?” the Agent in Charge was becoming angry, impatient with the pudgy Corporal.
“The man,” the Corporal replied. “The man from the Navy. The Jew from their Navy, that’s who took the boat. The Jew.”
The airplane was equipped with a scrambled satellite telephone. The agent dialed a number and was quickly in contact with the Deputy Director. He reported all he’d learned. The Corporal claimed he did not know the name of the Jew, as he called him. Quick questioning of fishermen on the quay resulted in similar responses. Most remembered the man who showed up one day on a fishing boat and sailed away on the yacht a short time later. They all knew him simply as the Jew, the Agent in Charge reported.
The Deputy Director dialed Rhymes’ cell phone. He briefed Rhymes on what the Agent in Charge reported. He was surprised by Rhymes response.
“I expected something like that,” Rhymes said. “Not that exactly of course, but something like that.”
“I’m sorry we couldn’t come up with a name,” the Deputy Director said. “We’ll keep on it. He must have given a name to somebody. We’ll stay at this. I fully understand how important it is to identify that man.”
Rhymes interrupted him.
“I appreciate your efforts,” he said. “But you needn’t bother. I know exactly who the Jew is. I just needed confirmation.”
“Well then let’s cut the crap Rhymes,” the Deputy Director was upset, thinking he’d been misled. “What is this guy’s name? Who is this Jew?”
“His name,” Rhymes said, jiggling the gold-colored dog tags he’d found lying on the navigation station of the sailboat, “his name is Chaim Levi. Lieutenant Chaim Levi of the Israel Defense Forces.